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And it's crap across the OSes. On Linux laptops don't wake up from sleep, on Windows they keep waking up when nobody asks for it.

In our home office room there's three laptops. My private one running Fedora, my work PC that sadly runs Windows and my wife's laptop also running Windows.

My work laptop and my wife's laptop keep waking up wasting electricity, and my private laptop needs a hard reset to wake it up every second time.

That feature should be stupid simple, yet it doesn't work across the board.

Rant over.

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[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

And it's crap across the OSes.

Never had these problems with MacBooks. It’s probably one advantage of the OS and hardware being made by the same company.

[-] miguel@fedia.io 6 points 1 week ago

I noticed the same. The old macbook that I restored to become my 'writing' machine can sit asleep for a week (as I found out by accident) and just pops right up when opened. My windows and linux laptops have so many sleep issues.

[-] d00phy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Agreed. For all the downsides people point out with Mac’s, they handle this and battery life quite well. My daily driver is a Mac, and everything I connect to runs some flavor of Linux. Then there’s the Windows 11 thing my work foists upon me.

[-] TVA@thebrainbin.org 2 points 1 week ago

Agreed, I disable sleep on all laptops other than my MacBook and my work laptop which manages to drain its battery and overheat itself on my bag semi frequently.

The MB has never had negative issues with sleep.

Macs aren't immune to S0 sleep options. The Apple silicon CPUs are just so efficient that when it fails to fall to sleep it doesn't matter. Intel ones it sucks balls when it fails.

[-] ChokingHazard@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Even my Intel MacBook Pro slept like a champ. They aren’t 100% immune but 99.95% I didn’t have an issue compared to my work windows laptop which was like 25% sleep worked and woke up correctly.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

That's fair, never had one, so I can't judge that.

[-] illusionist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago

I never had problems with sleep. Neither with fedora nor suse nor arch

[-] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 week ago

The problem is it's not stupid simple, it's actually fairly complicated. Each piece of hardware and its driver must be suspended. The GPU is a particularly tricky one. Its processor must be suspended, and the state saved. In the kernel, the driver must suspend its execution, and likewise save its state. Then on resume, each half has to reload and begin execution again. And if there's any mismatch in the resumed states, the GPU and/or driver crash and probably take the kernel with it.

Now do that for the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound card, USB, disk controller, and every other device.

[-] HyperlinkYourHeart@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

This guy sleeps.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Hell, why is sleep so hard for most humans?

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 week ago

Absolutely unfair, I tell ya!

[-] RamblingPanda@lemmynsfw.com 0 points 1 week ago

Stop judging, at least I made it to bed. It's not my fault sleep can't find me.

[-] anguo@piefed.ca 1 points 1 week ago

Narrator: It was.

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[-] exu@feditown.com 6 points 1 week ago

A few years ago Windows invented a new sleep state, s0ix, instead of the previous s3 state. This makes a laptop behave more like a phone, able to wake up when it receives new data.

Unfortunately this is usually implemented badly and also causing the removal or neglect of previously reliable s3 sleep.

[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

wakes up when nobody asks for it.

Wrong. You might not have asked for it, but it is not your computer, it's Windows' computer. Microsoft decides when it wakes up.

[-] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 4 points 1 week ago

Wait, are you suggesting it's consistent and reliable on desktops?

[-] mbfalzar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago

I'm roughly 25 years into using computers daily and never turning them off and I've never had or used a desktop that didn't sleep and wake reliably, either naturally or using the sleep and wake buttons on the keyboard, with both Linux and Windows

[-] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Are you talking the full set of S0-S3 sleep as well as hibernation? Or just whatever your machine did by default? Because I've never had one do all of them correctly without freezing up or having some other issue, across multiple motherboard brands and BIOS updates and so forth. ~30 years here, Windows mostly then the last few on Linux.

[-] Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago

Yep I’m with you. I’ve been under the assumption the “sleep” button is some sort of joke Microsoft includes just to mess with people. Never had it work reliably on desktop or laptop since it appeared

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Tbh, I don't know. The last time I used a desktop on a daily basis was 2020, and that was just my work PC where I wouldn't really care if it woke up while I wasn't at work.

The last time I had a desktop PC at home was in 2009, so I really can't say what is happening there in the meantime.

And at least to me, sleep on a laptop is much more important than on a desktop. Battery usage isn't really a thing on a desktop (usually at least).

Interestingly, I do own a little 2010 netbook that I use as an ultra-mobile laptop when I really don't need any kind of performance, and that one does all sleep states including hibernation perfectly out of the box. Even when just sleeping it loses maybe 1-2% of charge per day.

But all the other laptops I own suck when sleeping.

[-] Deconceptualist@leminal.space 0 points 1 week ago

Well yeah obviously it's way more important on anything portable. For me it's very reliable on Steam Deck. But that's also kind of a core feature, and it only has one type of sleep (in game mode at least). But it does still drain battery faster than I'd like.

I'm curious, what kind of netbook is that one you mention?

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

It's an EEE PC 1005P. It's an outdated piece of garbage, but sleeping works perfectly and the battery life is crazy. 8 hours on its extended battery, 5 hours on the stock battery. And these aren't new batteries either.

With AntiX Linux performance is ok enough for what I need it for.

[-] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

weirdly i have the windows problem on linux with my laptop: never have I had it not wake from sleep, but sometimes it starts overheating while on sleep and drains the battery super quick

many times ive put my laptop on sleep in my pouch, taken it out and hear the fans blasting, the laptop is burning hot and the battery lost 40% in 20 minutes

[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Maybe that's more an issue with modern standby? Or the hardware has some quirks. The last two laptops I had were a Thinkpad and now a Dell Latitude. And they both sleep very well. I close the lid and they'll drain a few battery percent over the day, I open the lid, the display lights up and I can resume work... Rarely any issues with Linux.

[-] arin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Yes modern standby has burned my laptop in my backpack after the windows implementation... Insane

[-] diffusive@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I researched this in (checking notes) 2009 or so… things may have slightly changed since (and my memory is fading away)

At the time there was a standard for sleeping. Microsoft was part of the standard… and then they decided to implement in a different way (classic Microsoft, of course).

Hardware producers then adjusted to windows because… well… we were dozens of us using Linux on laptops.

This created issues in Linux because there were some purist developers that wanted to follow the standards, others that were more pragmatic and wanted to implement the windows way. In the end nothing worked.

Fast forward to today, windows waking up constantly I guess it’s broken as expected because it wants to allow background processes to do stuff. Linux not waking up sounds still the issue from 2009: there are multiple levels of sleep and the deepest was the most problematic. If I have to guess your laptop wakes up just fine if the battery is full and you left closed for few minutes… while it doesn’t when the battery is low-ish and/or you left sleeping for a longer period

[-] glimse@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

It's waking up because another device on the network (probably router) is pinging it

Disable "Wake on Magic Packet" and the Windows sleep issue goes away

[-] floo@retrolemmy.com 1 points 1 week ago

Sleep function works pretty flawlessly on macOS. Always has. The hibernation function is pretty great, too.

[-] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

On older Macs the light would pulse when sleeping in the same pattern as a human breathing while asleep.

[-] floo@retrolemmy.com 1 points 1 week ago

I remember that. It was so cool.

I really miss when Apple made devices that had those awesome little touches. I still think Apple devices are pretty great, but they used to be better.

[-] illusionist@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Never had I problems with sleep. Neither with arch, suse, fedora nor ubuntu. Neither with Gnome nor with kde.

Not even with windows.

Must be the hardware (brand).

[-] JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

on Windows they keep waking up when nobody asks for it

Good to hear.

[-] piefood@feddit.online 1 points 1 week ago

I haven't used sleep on any of my laptops for >20 years because it's been so unreliable. Rather than getting frustrated, I gave up pretending it would ever work, and adjusted accordingly.

[-] Tikiporch@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Are you talking about sleep, hibernate, or monitor off?

[-] MisterD@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago
[-] hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I have an old Dell XPS 13 sleep works great on for Linux probably can sleep a week or two and still have charge left when I open the lid. I have a newer framework and it's dead in 2 days while "sleeping."

S0 standby is the problem. It's a flawed idea from the start. The theory is it's more "secure" or something. But like... Who cares about stealing shit from memory going from sleep to wake.

Now my laptop drops 20% charge in 5-10 minutes and goes into hibernation. It draws more power than if it's on.

[-] SheeEttin@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 week ago

It's not about security. It's about maintaining a network connection so you can stream Spotify and receive Facebook updates while it's "sleeping". It's fucking stupid.

[-] CAWright@infosec.pub 1 points 1 week ago

Newer Dells have removed the s3 deep sleep. I believe the cutoff is between Intel 11th gen and 12th gen in (at least) Latitudes. I have a i7 12th gen that sucks at sleep, but an i5 8th gen that sleeps well.

[-] sxan@midwest.social 1 points 1 week ago

I think the laptop really does matter, and it's because chipsets are not all equal in how well their sleep modes are supported in the OS.

I've been buying XPS13s for over a decade; I've had four (three personal, and one requisitioned for me by my job), and sleep and suspend have worked almost flawlessly on them under Linux. In the office, most everyone else would move between meetings or to their desks with the lids almost closed, to prevent sleep and the problems it caused, but I'd just fearlessly close my lid; it was ironic to me that running Linux on the XPS I had more reliable sleep behavior than the Windows people on their laptops.

For OP: low power, initialization, and restoring state has to be implemented by each chip, and there are a lot of shitty, poorly implemented chips. Then the OS also has to store and restore state for each chipset, and even if the chip implements it well, the OS has to do a good job restoring power in the correct order and restoring the state for each chip. If anything goes wrong in either the chip or driver implementation, you get a broken state.

This is aggravated by the fact that Linux is a monolithic kernel, and if any device drivers get borked it usually borks the whole kernel. This wouldn't be as bad a problem if Linux were a microkernel architecture and drivers could just be killed and restarted.

[-] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

Re the windows waking up, it's likely a network card/chip to blame. You can disable the ability to wake inside Device Manager. Every time I had a system wake unexpectedly, networking was to blame.

[-] chunes@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

First thing I do on any OS, but especially linux, is turn off every sleep-related option permanently. I don't care anymore. I won't fight with it.

[-] ter_maxima@jlai.lu 1 points 1 week ago

I have had no issues with sleep on macOS, so whatever they are doing we should try to copy !

The same MacBook air, that used to last over a week with the lid closed on macOS, now needs to be charged every 3 days on Asahi NixOS.

Linux is a much better operating system, even just for the sheer variety of software available, but power management isn't quite there yet in my experience on this laptop.

[-] Wahots@pawb.social 1 points 1 week ago

It's amazing how bad Linux and Windows are at sleeping on my laptops. My steam deck has a power drain issue too, even when fully powered off.

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 1 week ago

My steam deck has a power drain issue too, even when fully powered off.

Noticed this too... Does not feel very off

[-] jmhmccr@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago
[-] dsilverz@calckey.world 0 points 1 week ago

@squaresinger@lemmy.world It's probably because my kernel version is very old (5.14.11-arch1-1, haven't updated since 2019, even though it's Arch, a rolling-release distro) and my Acer laptop is old as well (Intel Core 7th gen), but I rarely have problems regarding laptop sleep. After I wake the laptop up, the video (including every VT#) may get frozen and I have to remotely SSH and request a reboot (and when this happens, sometimes the reboot gets stuck as well, so I have to do a hard power-off). But it's very rare, as stated, and I daily put my laptop to sleep without issues, sometimes the system uptime stretches to weeks (currently, my system was booted almost four days ago).

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

It does work fine too on my 2010 EEE PC running Antix running on a 5.10.x kernel. Seems to be more an issue with newer devices, since every single laptop I own that's newer than maybe 2013 has these issues.

[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 week ago

Considering the security implications of suspend and how much enabling zram has improved my workflow for hibernate, I can't really say I miss suspend any much. It was fast (near-instant in good days) but it's always been a bet whether you can restore state or have to clean boot.

Also at least in my experience there were always a number of things that just borked suspend if you left them unattended. Back when I was still maining Debian Stable on 2022, having a remote mounted via SSHFS or having Redshift active always would lead to a near-eternal freeze before suspending, or worst case scenario a suspend-into-crash (ie.: suspends right, but panics during resume).

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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2025
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